Based in Addison, Texas, Sentry Energy Production LLC is a privately held oil and gas exploration and development company.

Tag Archives: Gas

In recent years, there has been a lot of interest in the process of hydraulic fracturing in the extraction of natural gas. Here, Sentry Energy explains how fracking works and why gas companies so frequently use the technique.

Also known as hydraulic fracturing, fracing, and hydrofracking, fracking is the process by which a rock layer can be cracked using fluid pressure. The process is usually used to increase the extraction rates and ultimate recovery of oil and natural gas. By opening up cracks in reservoir rock formations, energy professionals can greatly expand the yield of a given well or reservoir. Companies utilize the technique in around 90 percent of natural gas wells in the United States.

When fracking a well, gas companies inject a pressurized mixture of water, chemicals, and a proppant, such as sand, to hold the fractures open after ending the injection, so gas can travel to the surface. Hydraulic fracturing requires a very specific variety of sand. With very small, round particles of nearly pure quartz, the sand contains few impurities and does not disintegrate when pumped underground and put under the pressure inherent in the process. Companies conduct most fracking in horizontally drilled wells through shale reservoirs. Shale is particularly impermeable deep in the earth and the stimulating effects of fracking enable gas extraction. Companies create some reservoirs, such as the Bakken, Barnett Shale, Haynesville Shale, and Montney, almost exclusively through fracking and multistage completion systems.

While professionals engage in fracking in this country mostly to stimulate production in oil and gas wells, others employ the technique to stimulate groundwater wells, precondition rock for caving, enhance waste cleanup processes, dispose of waste, or measure the stress in the earth.